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IntroductionIt's over a year now since i-mate announced it's Ultimate range specs and released photos of the prototypes. While some greeted the golden clamshell form factor and front OLED display of the 9502 with excitement many were cynical as to i-mate's ability to deliver such a device. Others simply didn't like the colour. Jump forward 12 months and there's no front OLED display and no bling in sight. After much speculation and a staggered release schedule that has already seen luke warm reviews of the Ultimate 6150 and 8150 the 9502 is finally here. It's not like the 6150 or 8150 are poor devices, the simple fact is they are unremarkable. Hopes have always been higher for the 9502 to the point where the press have already labelled it the Kaiser killer. While the devices are undoubtedly similar the i-mate has a few trump cards up its sleeve. Read on to find out if they are aces.....
For your delectation photographs are thumbnails which may be clicked on to load a larger image.
Thanks go out to the friendly folks at Clove for providing us with a review sample.
For more information on the i-mate 9502 at Clove go to the Clove website
Technical Specifications
Platform Power• Microsoft® Windows Mobile® 6 Professional • Rechargeable 1660mAh, Li-ion battery
Dimensions Camera• 116mm(L) x 60mm(W) x 17.8mm(T) • 3.0 Megapixel auto-focus camera• 200g with battery pack • LED Compensation light • VGA camera for Video CallsProcessor/ Chipset
• 400 MHz Qualcomm® MSM 7200™ Connectivity • GPS - Integrated Qualcomm® GPS hardware solution with internal antennaMemory • WiFi 802.11 b/g• 256 MB ROM • Bluetooth® QD ID: B013198• 128 MB RAM - Class 2 transmit power Supported profilesLCD Module • ActiveSync®, • 2.8” VGA (640×480) Touch-screen • Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP),• 65k colour TFT with backlight • Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP), • Basic Imaging Profile (BIP), Radio Function • Basic Printing Profile (BPP), • GSM / GPRS / EDGE • Generic Access Profile (GAP), - Quad-band 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz • Hands-Free Profile (HFP), - GPRS class 12 • Headset Profile (HSP), - EGPRS Multislot Class 12 • Human Interface Device (HID), • Tri-band UMTS / WCDMA • Internet sharing, - Band 1 (2100 MHz) • Object Push Profile (OPP), - Band 2 (1900 MHz) • Personal Area Network (PAN), - Band 5 (850 MHz) • Serial Port Profile (SPP)- Diversity for Band 1
• HSDPA and HSUPA Inbox Accessories• Services • AC adapter• Speech Services with HR/EFR/FR/AMR codec • USB Sync cable• Emergency call • Direct Video Out cable• DTMF tone generation • Stereo headset with microphone• call holding, waiting, forwarding, barring • Leather pouch• SMS • Stylus• SIM function
- 3V/1.8V uSIM operation Interface• SIM application toolkit • Combo port for USB, TV + Audio output, Charging• Internal Antenna • MicroSD™ card slot • Audio jack (2.5mm)Keyboard/ Buttons • SIM card slot• Slider LCD exposes 39-key Qwerty keypad
• Power button Included Software• Send and End buttons • Windows Outlook® Mobile: Calendar, Contacts,• Messaging and Internet buttons
• Camera button Messaging, Tasks, Windows® Push Mail• Volume up and down • Excel® Mobile, PowerPoint® Mobile, Word® Mobile• Three (3) software programmable buttons • Internet Explorer® Mobile• Two (2) soft-keys • i-Q Services™• Start and OK buttons • Windows Media® Player 10 Mobile• 5-way navigation • ClearVue PDF viewer• 360° Jog wheel and OK / Back • i-mate GPRS Configurator for WAP and MMS• Soft reset • Picture & Video Viewer • ActiveSync® ClientNotification • Windows® Live Messenger• Blue LED indicates Wifi, Bluetooth status. • Calculator• Green / Red LED indicates network, power, charging & system events • Voice Notes• Yellow LED indicates GPS status • File Explorer• LED, sound, and vibration notification • MMS Client: MMS 1.2 supported • Java Virtual Machine (J2ME, CLDC 1.1, MIDP 2.0)Multimedia • SIM Manager• Supports: AAC, AAC+, MP3, Midi, AMR, ASF, WMA® • Video Calling• Full duplex speakerphone • Voice Speed Dial• Integrated microphone and receiver
• One 2.5mm earphone jack with stereo sound Regulatory• Advanced Echo Cancellation • R&TTE, SAR• Supports H.263, H.264, MPEG4, WMV® • BQB, WiFi • A-Tick, CB, CE, FCC, ICASA, TRA • Windows Mobile® Logo (NSTL)
Externals and Hardware
In the box
The full retail package as sold by Clove Technology contains:
i-mate 9502
Wired headset
1660mAh battery
Leather pouch with belt clip
2x telescopic stylus
USB mains charger
UK mains connector
EU main connector
US mains connector
3 phono video/audio out cable
USB mini male to USB male cable
Quick start guide
User manual
Getting started CD containing:
Microsoft Active Sync
Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Centre
It's interesting to see Windows Mobile Device Centre finally bundled with a device, but I am very surprised i-mate hasn’t included a few software items with the device. Something like the SpB suite, or at least Mobile Shell would have been nice.
Convergence
Modern life in the 21st Century is becoming ever more complex and hectic, and PDAs that are being developed have to evolve to suit that need. No longer are users happy to carry around a PDA, phone, etc; more functionality is demanded from the market and in ever more pocketable and slight devices.
The i-mate 9502 strives to meet these needs boasting a truly spectacular specification and therefore contains the following areas of functionality within the device:
Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)
Mobile (cell) Phone
Camera
GPS Navigation Unit
Push Email
Portable media player
Laptop computer replacement
As we proceed through the review you should able to decide for yourself whether the 9502 ticks all the boxes.
Aesthetics
With the latest HTC devices, the upcoming Sony Ericcson offerings, and in particular the I-phone, the world of Windows Mobile devices has been turned on its head. In the past manufacturers were hell bent on pushing the specifications one step further with each mobile generation. It's interesting that many of this year's new releases will be focusing more on svelte lines, flush screens and fancy finger waving interfaces than faster CPUs and more RAM. From this perspective it seems unfortunate that i-mate have released a powerhouse of a machine instead of a shiny piece of techno jewellery. I think the aesthetics of the 9502, and indeed the whole i-mate Ultimate range, are their weakest point. That said the 9502 is definitely the strongest looking of the i-mate range so far. With the screen slid open I like it. It's a bit "sidekick-esque" but better, and I've always been a big fan of the matt black "stealth effect" finish. Unfortunately with the screen slid closed it's a bit blocky. It looks more like a chunky chocolate bar than an I-phone. A few more curves would have been nice here please i-mate.
When you feel the 9502 in the palm of your hand it feels good. The build quality feels like it will see you into the next millennium and you can't beat the cold feeling of metal on flesh. The battery cover on the device is metal, and it felt solid. It's not light, but that's not all bad. It doesn't feel overly heavy, just right.
Front
Looking at the front view of the 9502 and you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a run of the mill Windows Mobile 6 device. All controls are present and accounted for and most things are exactly where you'd expect. The two send and receive buttons are large and easily accessible towards the bottom of the device. Sitting in between them is the well shaped Dpad and action button. The row above the Dpad is a little irregular as it contains the Windows and Ok buttons either side of the two soft buttons. This layout is a little unusual but works very well. I had no issues with finding the send and receive buttons or the Dpad without looking. This is important for picking up calls efficiently. Above the screen are the standard Mail and IE buttons. These surround the ear speaker and in the top left, the front camera.
Back
As I mentioned in the Aesthetics section the back cover is made of metal as opposed to plastic. Although this might have increased weight slightly it probably shaved a half a millimetre off the depth. Also of note is the back cover sits over the top of MicroSD socket protecting it from the elements. I think this is an excellent idea, much better than the rubber door stops HTC have been fitting as covers to their sockets. The cover is removed by a slide mechanism situated below it. It's not the easiest rear cover to remove, but you get a lot of confidence about the integrity of the device. The rear cover also contains the impressive 3 mega pixel camera and flash, but I'll discuss that later.
Top & Bottom
The top and bottom of the device are both unusually sparse. The bottom only contains the microphone and the top just the power button. The implementation of the power button is a little unusual as regard to how long you need to depress it to switch the 9502 on. The first couple of tries I had I thought the device was faulty as it takes a good 4 or 5 seconds of holding the button down before it fires up. I felt this was an over long amount of time to have to hold the button down. I understand why it is done, you don't want to accidentally power on or off the device accidentally but 2 or 3 seconds would suffice.
Right
Both the left and right sides of the 9502 contain a plethora of controls. The right hand side of the device contains, from top to bottom, the 3.5mm headphone jack, the camera, voice recording and volume buttons. I'm sure anybody who owns an HTC device containing the all in one USB connector is looking at the 3.5mm headphone socket with a fair amount of envy. With the A2DP functionality we have access to today it's not as big an advantage as in the past but it would still be on my list for the perfect device. The other buttons present are of a decent size and travel. In short they do as they were designed.
Left
The left hand side of the device is equally as well populated as the right. The charge/sync USB socket and the comm manager buttons sit along side the combination of the scroll wheel and ok button we often see on the more powerful devices. Again as with the right side all the controls seem well controlled and good for purpose.
Stylus & Headset
The stylus silo for the 9502 is situated diagonally opposite the power button on the top of the device. The silo itself is a full length affair that sits nicely in the palm of the hand. There are no fancy gadgets, no feats of engineering just a good solid stylus that works very well.
The headset is a fairly nice looking affair, but is not out of the ordinary for this calibre of device. I quite like the headphones but found the large silver button a bit garish.
Battery
The 9502 has a very big Lithium Ion battery. It's not quite as wide as some of its competitors but it is large. It's not surprising then that it contains a huge 1660mAh of juice. When you look at the seemingly measly 1350mAh of the HTC Kaiser and the positively miserly 1320mAh of the Toshiba G900 it's easy to see why the 9502 offers 2 days worth of use from a single charge. Something neither of the other two devices are capable of. When you consider the devices are all roughly the same size it is interesting to see the volume of the battery.
i-mate has obviously done a very good job of cramming all their technology into such a small space allowing for a bigger cell. For a launch ROM on a new device with such a vast array of technology, I've been very impressed with the battery life on the 9502. An average day’s use for me consists of up to 20 minutes of calls, 30 minutes of browsing in a mediocre 3G area and about 100 push emails. I'm not much of a texter but there's usually a couple of SMS in there too. I also use my device as an MP3 player while I'm cycling to work, so there's also an extra 30 minutes of music too, over a set of Bluetooth headphones. For me the 2 day charge is a very important factor when choosing a device and there are very few "full spec" devices that offer this functionality.
Sim Loading
Installing your SIM card into i-mate 9502 is a fairly standard affair. Flip off the back panel; pull out the battery and slid open the SIM holder. Next insert your SIM card and slide the cover shut again. Pop the battery in place fit the rear cover and you're good to go. While I like the SIM under the slide feature on the Tytn II, I don't really think it's necessary for most people to want to swap their Sims without powering off the device. If you do though it's something you'll need to think about.
Size
As you can see from the comparison shots with the O2 Orbit 2, HTC Tytn II, and Toshiba G900 the i-mate 9502 is not a small device. While larger than the Orbit 2 (left) It fits nicely in between the Tytn II and the G900 being a smidgeon taller than the HTC device and a touch shorter than the Toshiba. The 9502 is thinner than its two keyboard wielding rivals but not as slim as the Orbit 2.
Screen
I decided not to describe the screen along with the front of the device for the simple reason that it's awesome, and deserves a section all to itself. i-mate has continued the recent trend of flush screens, although their implementation is not quite completely flush as the ones we've seen from HTC. There's a nice chrome bevel around the screen that sets it nicely into the matt black case. The screen is ultra sharp as you'd expect from the VGA resolution, but it's also very bright making it surprisingly useful in bright sunlight. One thing I've noticed with the new HTC screens is the extra layer the Touch functionality adds to the screen seems to make the screen less usable in direct sunlight. The i-mate doesn't suffer from this problem, but the trade off is that the screen itself is a lot more open to the elements. For me personally I'd go for the brightness and clarity of the 9502 screen any day of the week. It truly is a thing of beauty.
Keyboard
The slide out keyboard on the i-mate 9502 although nicely put together from an engineering perspective, suffers from a 30% or so reduction in real estate when compared to its rivals. The slide is well engineered and as per usual there is a nice backlight (white this time). When compared to using the Tytn II for example the smaller keys make the thumb board less useable. The keys themselves are responsive enough but I just found there wasn't enough space to get a good rhythm going. I'm sure you'd get used to the size quickly enough as it's still much better than the "70's calculator" keyboards on devices like Blackberries and the HTC S620 but I found it harder to get used to than the instantly accessible Tytn II and Toshiba G900.
TV/VGA Out
One feature that is present across the Ultimate range is VGA/TV-out. This is an arena where i-mate is making this device a work horse for business people, particularly international travellers. Not only is there that glorious VGA screen on the device but you can hook it up to external displays for presentations. The included cable contains both a Composite video and a pair of phono audio outputs. I've tried the Output on my 50" plasma and even over a Composite connection I was surprised how good a video reproduction came from the device and how impressive DivX movies transferred over to the bigger screen.
GPS
The GPS unit was tested using Copilot 7 and TomTom Navigator 6 for GPS Navigation, as well as VisualGPSce for general diagnostics, and no problems were encountered. Lock times remained incredibly fast as per most of the devices we see these days and no signal loss took place at any point. The slide out screen form factor makes the 9502 an excellent candidate for an in car GPS system. Unfortunately i-mate have not included any GPS navigation software with the 9502.
Applications
The Ultimate 9502 comes with Windows Mobile® 6 Professional so all the usual programs are in situ. I make reference to a few of the highlights as Windows Mobile 6 has been out for a while now and the build is well known. In addition I will highlight the i-mate customisations and what they provide by way of extra value or convenience.
Standard highlights include:
ClearVue PDF - for reading PDF files.
Windows Live Messenger.
Remote Desktop - for the more adventurous and SysAdmins out there.
Streaming Media application.
Java - for running small Java applets.
SIM Manager - allows you to copy contacts between the SIM card and the 8150.
System Info - application displaying free memory, BT status and battery charge.
Windows Live - various services from the Windows Live Mobile stable.
In all a fairly comprehensive set of applications.
i-mate have added some customisations but they are not earth shattering when compared to how HTC is now writing applications purely for its devices such as HTC Cube and HTC Home. They are somewhat useful, however....
Device Customisation - allows you to set up various aspects of the device regarding Regional prefs etc.
Enhanced Support - Allows you to register the device with i-mate for enhanced services. (As this was a review device I couldn't establish whether these carried any extra charges).
Enterprise Activation - allows configuration for enhanced network and security features for connections to corporate networks.
TV Out - this is for the activation of the external VGA port.
i-mate Configurator - this is to configure the device with the Carrier's settings (SMS/WAP/GPRS etc.).
Wireless Manager - ....answers on a postcard....
JBlend - Java Midlet Manager.
Opera - Web Browser alternative to PIE.
All in, that's not a lot of enhanced functionality but then i-mate is a small company and software development can be a costly exercise. There are a couple of tweaks to the base software like the Wireless Manager and dialler skin that look quite nice, and further applications along these lines would have been a welcome addition. On other third party devices like those from Eten and the i-mate of old we have seen bundled applications such as Spb Mobile Shell or Pocket Plus. I would have liked to have seen some kind of Today screen enhancement application along these lines but sadly there is nothing like this included. As you can see from the screenshot of the Programs launcher installed Spb Mobile Shell, Google maps and TCPMP media player to enhance the 9502 while I used it.
ROM and Memory
Due to the large 256MB ROM/ 128 MB RAM, the Ultimate 9502 is not lacking in usable internal memory for programs and storage. It can always be enhanced by the use of a MicroSD storage card of capacity up to 2GB but remember the 9502 cannot take an SDHC card which may be addressed in a future ROM release, we'll see.
All this and the snappy processor help the i-mate Ultimate 9502 fly along with few bottlenecks. I'm not one for filling a device with a huge amount of applications but throughout the 2 weeks I used the 9502 I didn't have a single performance issue from the 9502. This machine flies.
Camera
The 9502 comes with a 3 mega pixel camera. 3MP has become the standard for this generation of devices from the likes of HTC et al, although some of the smaller devices still ship with 2MP. As we all know though, it's not all about the size of your pixel count so how does the image quality of the i-mate hold up? As you can see from the example photographs below the camera produces a very nice image (for a phone camera) that you could even produce a small (6x4) print from. The images would also look pretty good on a digital photo frame. This is just about the best non "camera-phone" camera I've seen on a mobile device. Nice.
As ever if I could fault the camera on the 9502 then as per usual it would have to be the flash. The "flash" or LED compensation light as it is know makes very little difference in poor light except for those obligatory "self portrait" shots when you've had one too many. It's still no substitute for a real flash and consequently bad light shots are unspectacular.
Example Photographs
PC Integration
It was nice to see both ActiveSync 4.5 and Windows Mobile Device Centre bundled with the i-mate 9502. Obviously this caters for both Vista and XP users. I didn't experience any issues with XP or Vista, and as you can see, my Vista SP1 installation auto detected the 9502 and even had a nice image displayed in WMDC too. Lovely.
Pros and Cons
Beautiful screen. 
Takes ages to turn on. Generally responsive. Cannot see SDHC cards. Nice MicroSD cover mechanism. Scroll wheel click takes a hard push. VGA Video Out. Keyboard would benefit from being bigger. 3.5mm Headset jack. Great camera. Good array of external controls. Big powerful battery. Overall Conclusion
There's a whole lot to like about the i-mate 9502. The sliding keyboard is nicely executed, even if the keys could do with being a bit bigger. The hardware camera is better than I was expecting and the device operated swiftly and without the lag we've come to expect. That's partly because there's no lack of power here, and while it would have been nice for i-mate to include a decent software bundle, other features like the beautiful VGA screen and video out are fantastic additions. I've made a big deal about comparisons with the HTC Kaiser and the i-mate is, IMHO a better device. If it had been released 6 months or so ago it would have seriously shaken the market. As it is, Apple's influence has everyone’s focus on flashy sliding UIs and finger touch screen control. The 9502 is an old school flagship device. It's not the prettiest gadget on the market but if you're looking for a SIM free power house PDA you'll want to give the 9502 a test drive. It goes a lot better than it looks.
This post has been edited by The Guru: 24 March 2010 - 09:51 AM
